


woolgathering

by thewilding



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Black Lives Matter, M/M, interracial tension, why isn't there more gilbert/bash?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24932995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewilding/pseuds/thewilding
Summary: Sometimes Gilbert forgot his father was dead and went into his old room to wake him up.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Sebastian "Bash" Lacroix
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	woolgathering

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in Season 2, before Bash goes to the Bog.

Sometimes Gilbert forgot his father was dead and went into his old room to wake him up.

There in the bed built by his grandfather, under the heavy wool blanket quilted by his grandmother, a distinctive dark-haired head lay on the pillow. Not for the first time, Gilbert paused midstep, between breaths.

He stood quietly in the sparse room. Dust motes swirled in the early morning light, the cows lowed in the field for their milking, and yet his thoughts remained caught in reverie while the other man slumbered on, unknowingly.

They spoke often these days with easy familiarity, gained from a shared past of wide oceans and blistering furnaces and neighboring hammocks. And when they did speak, whether while lifting bales into the hayloft or later that night over their simple dinner, Gilbert always looked Bash directly in his eyes. To gaze back, clear-eyed and resolute in one’s own dignity, had begun as the habit of a slight youth weighed down with the adult responsibilities of his family’s farm, and years later it was the defiant style of an unseasoned trimmer with no understanding of the ship hierarchy, Bash had been quick to point out (hypocritically, as Bash tended to share his same disdain for abusive authority). 

Lately though, Gilbert’s eyes had sharpened on Bash’s own when they conversed, as a way of restraining himself from wherever else his sight could wander.

It was only now, with the other man deep in repose, that Gilbert could allow his eyes to roam that familiar face. The thick lashes, the scraggly beard growing in to protect him from the cold, the brown skin - usually glowing in the Trini sun, or bruised in the bowels of the ship, now with ashy patches from the scraping Canadian wind. Gilbert’s fingers itched to skate over them: evidence of Bash’s choice to come here with him, for better or for worse.

For a long time now, Gilbert had seen him as his partner in all things. But before that, Bash had been his mentor, an intimacy he now found that he missed.

Back then, Bash seemed to enjoy teaching him about the life and culture of ship trimmers and of the Caribbean islands, and to be seen as the expert for once - especially by a white man, no matter how young. Gilbert had sincerely reveled in being his pupil, carefully laying his hands over Bash’s to drink from the young coconut in the correct way. He had always loved learning, but now with his father’s death and boarded-up farm fresh in his mind, it had been even more of a relief to let someone else take charge and simply care for him.

It had been that way even when sharing a bed in the loft over a brothel in Port of Spain, the morning after their awkward meeting with Bash’s mother. Gilbert had opened his eyes to find himself pressed against Bash’s lean back, sticky with each other’s sweat. Embarrassed, he had started to move away. Bash had simply laughed and turned around to pull him closer, hands lazily pressing down on him until he gasped.

From then on, there were several mornings that Gilbert woke like that: sheets damp with humidity, kingbirds cackling on the roof, and Bash’s confident hands bringing him off before getting up to see about breakfast from the pushcart vendors. Gilbert had never felt anything like that before: the easy trust of one’s body to someone else who would tease it, rouse it, play it like an instrument he didn’t recognize. Bash, who resented any glimmer of indignity in himself, seemed to thrive off of Gilbert’s inexperience, his submission, his hands clinging to those muscled shoulders and his mouth filled with the rise and fall of one word: “Sebastian.” 

Even now, Gilbert’s lips formed the name silently, and his whole body shivered involuntarily at the visceral memory.

How had it all changed so much? Since coming to Avonlea, they had never regained the same easy balance. Everyone assumed Gilbert had brought Bash back to work for him as a laborer; Gilbert alone knew how lucky he was that Bash had chosen to come with him. Didn’t Bash know that he thanked God every day at his father’s grave that he wasn’t alone anymore in that cold farmhouse?

But no, it seemed like Gilbert could not help but misstep with Bash. He had first underestimated how hard it has been for him to adjust to Avonlea. “When we talk about island culture, this is not it!” Bas had laughed, his lilt unchanged. But Gilbert thought he heard a note of bitterness, for the cold of the winter was sometimes matched only by the cold of the people.

When he later tried to express his gratefulness for the favor Bash had done him by coming North, Bash had given him such a look of offense, like he had demeaned him as merely hired help. Truly, Gilbert knew that no one who had grown up as isolated as he had could understand Bash’s experience, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

After Anne, Bash was the most forthright person Gilbert had ever met. Unlike Anne, he was painfully pragmatic about the state of the world. He always treated Gilbert like a man, not a boy - like the way he had always wanted to be treated himself. And when left alone in their corner of the world, were they not still two men looking at each other? But in Gilbert’s house, working his land, Bash seemed to doubt it.

Standing in his father’s old bedroom, Gilbert knew as certain as he knew his own name that he would in a moment give Bash everything he had, and he also knew in the same moment that Bash’s pride would let him accept nothing. Physically, as mere men in mortal bodies, he felt like they could reach an understanding. But add everything else in this cold world, and they were still oceans apart while living in the same house on the hill. Therefore, what could he do but bank his love in the hearth and let it smolder out each night?

This morning, buttoned up in his flannel overcoat with an itchy knit hat pulled down to his eyebrows, those pleasant tropical days seemed desperately faraway to Gilbert. The touches between them now were still friendly, the remarks teasing, but no more than that. Gilbert felt as if anything more had been a dream he could barely recall, like the slick taste of mango flesh and the salty port breeze on his tongue.

Taking one last look at Bash asleep in his father’s bed, he felt taken aback by his sudden intense desire to lift the wool blankets and push himself under them, thread his fingers through the coils of Bash’s chest hair, and tuck himself into the curve of that lean body. He wanted to believe he would be met with an arm pulling him close, rather than affront at yet another needy demand from someone who had asked for too much already.

He only wished Bash could see that it was in fact the opposite: that Gilbert wanted to be opened up again, to cede his body over to the other man, to beg to be owned so wholly and completely that he forgot his own name.

He closed his eyes, turned away, and went to milk the cows.


End file.
